Facebook is in talks to lease office space at SL Green Realty’s One Madison Avenue. The move echoes that of companies like Google and Amazon who are expanding their footprints in New York and establishing the city as an East Coast tech hub.
It’s unclear exactly how much space the social media company is looking to take, but landlord SL Green is looking to build an additional 18-story tower on the site, according to the New York Post. The addition would bring the building’s total rentable square footage to 1.5 million square feet. Citing sources, the Post also reported that negotiations for Facebook to take 870,000 square feet at 63 Madison Avenue may have ended.
The company currently has 266,000 square feet at 225 Park Avenue South and 758,000 square feet at 770 Broadway.
SL Green this month released renderings showing plans for a new tower atop the base of the building, which sits adjacent to the iconic the 700 foot-tall Flatiron District clock tower overlooking Madison Square Park. The 1.1 million-square-foot granite building is fully leased by Credit Suisse, which will move out when its lease expires in 2020.
Since Amazon’s announcement last month that it would move a campus to Queens’ Long Island City, many observers have seen the opportunity for New York to become more of a Silicon Valley for the East Coast. Solidifying this idea, Google announced this week it would double its New York workforce and invest $1 billion in new Hudson Square campus, taking 1.7 million square feet at 550 Washington Street, 315 Hudson Street and 345 Hudson Street. This is in addition to the company’s $2.4 billion purchase of the Chelsea Market building at 75 Ninth Avenue earlier this year. [NYP] — David Jeans